Abstract
Activists in Ecuador established in the 1940s what have come to be remembered as the country's first Indigenous-run bilingual schools. Or at least this is the image that their founders presented when reflecting back on their achievements years later, and what has become fixed in the minds of subsequent educators. Archival records, however, present a more complicated picture. Rather than as “Indigenous” or “bilingual,” the recently formed Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios (Ecuadorean Federation of Indians) had created them as “syndicate” schools to mobilize against the racial discrimination and economic exploitation that agricultural workers faced on government-owned haciendas. In the process, organizers came into conflict with government policies that mandated the creation of public schools in rural communities and on haciendas. The competing school systems became an arena in which public policy debates were carried out with ramifications that extended to rival notions of how society should be properly organized.
